


Echoes

by ndnickerson



Series: Tallest Tower [3]
Category: Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: Angst, F/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-29
Updated: 2009-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-05 11:30:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/41295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy tries to put her life back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

Nancy walked through the front doors of the Morning Record building that cool Friday morning with her eyes down.

Her father, she knew, had pulled strings. For three months she had been back home, and he and Hannah and even sometimes Bess and George had been watching her with something like betrayal in their eyes. With Ned's parents, the few times she had brought herself to see them, there had been only sympathy.

As far as everyone else in River Heights was concerned, Nancy had just been out of town for a while, getting her head straight, business as usual.

Then one day Hannah had marched into Nancy's bedroom at seven o'clock in the morning, pulled her covers off her face, and given her a stern glare. "Get up."

Nancy had stayed mute, her blue eyes welling with tears, which she loathed. She hated crying. She hated it. And she hated the horrible expression that came over Hannah's face when she did.

"If you don't get up right now—"

"Why," Nancy forced out, wiping her wet cheeks. "What's the point."

"Do you honestly think that the entire point of your life was to marry Ned and settle down and have a family? Is that really what you wanted, is that everything?"

At the sound of his name Nancy flinched, and the wail that was constantly humming under her skin swelled for a moment. "Yes," she said, her face crumpling.

"You and I both know it wasn't," Hannah shot back. "Now get out of bed, come downstairs and have some breakfast, and if you don't have your resume ready to go by noon I'm going to sign you up for the Foreign Legion and they'll have you digging ditches for ten hours a day, and at least that way you'll be doing something."

The severity in Hannah's tone had won out, and Nancy had given in. Now, standing in front of the receptionist's desk waiting for her guide to come, Nancy wasn't so sure.

"Nancy?"

"Yes," Nancy said, her smile in place, even though in her suit, with her pearl earrings and smart shoes and new briefcase, she felt like a paper doll, a lie. She smiled at Ann Granger as they passed her office, the older woman still nursing a mug of coffee, her brown eyes sympathetic when they lingered on Nancy. The bullpen was thick with the sounds of telephones, squeaking office chairs, the muted click of fingers on keyboards, the whirr of laser printers. All around her were people bent to a purpose. Nancy couldn't remember the last time she'd had one, other than to see if she could get through another day without hurting herself.

"Here's your desk."

Nothing in the room actually matched, except the phones. Nancy's desk was an old stenographer's desk, with no keyboard shelf. The beige tower of a computer was faded from the sunlight. She would have felt slighted if half the other desks hadn't been equally mismatched.

"You'll be reporting to..." Nancy's guide trailed off, raising an eyebrow. "Well, if it's not Bobcat Jackson, he can tell you who."

"Bobcat," Nancy repeated, just slightly incredulous.

"Yeah. And don't ask him where he got the nickname unless your entire day is clear. It's some long convoluted story about his time in the service."

"Ahh," Nancy said lightly, and she felt herself smile, just a little, the first genuine smile she'd had in weeks. "I'll keep that in mind."

They kept her busy for the rest of the day, showing her around the building even though she'd been there more times than she could remember, through the morgue and working with Ann Granger and to find the personal-ads stalker, but then it had been different, and when Nancy went outside on her lunch break she couldn't stop herself from looking at the patch of pavement in the driveway to the parking lot where Ned had fallen and she had been terrified of what she and her work had done to him.

When her eyes welled up Nancy forced herself to keep walking, a little faster. The weekend before, when she and Hannah had been packing up for Nancy's new apartment, Hannah had been understanding but it had been months and Ned wasn't even her husband, and she knew they all thought she should be over it by now. If not over it, at least not crying herself to sleep at night, at least not so depressed that some mornings she could not think of a good reason to get out of bed. She didn't tell them that she dreamt about Ned almost every night and when she woke every morning to find out it had been a lie she wept because it was like her heart had broken all over again.

In the cafe on the corner Nancy stood in line and automatically scanned the customers while she waited, shifting her weight from foot to foot, relieved when she was able to keep her welled eyes from spilling over, relieved when she could finally see clearly again. Three customers in front of her was a dark-haired guy, about six feet tall, and even though she knew it was foolish she kept staring hard at him until he turned and she saw that the jawline wasn't right, the shape of his cheeks didn't match.

It didn't matter. She still saw him everywhere, now, and that horrible crush when her heart sank to the floor, every time, was almost worse than that voice just at the edge of her hearing that she had followed into the sea, had almost followed beyond.

The day was just beginning to fade when Nancy paused, her key out, in front of her apartment door, and closed her eyes. Bess and George had their own living arrangements, and so Nancy had answered an ad seeking a roommate. Alicia was nice enough, but she spent a lot of time in the kitchen or the living room, driving Nancy back to her own bedroom. Alicia didn't ever ask if she was all right, even when her eyes were puffy and nearly swelled shut with tears. Alicia just let her be. That, at least, was the best thing Nancy could have asked for, in another person, now.

The entire apartment was full of the smell of chicken sauteeing on the stove, and Nancy closed and bolted the front door behind her quickly, not looking over at Alicia. Their apartment was plain, a cheap and relatively recent construction with an unimaginative floor plan upholstered in beige carpet with white walls, the kitchen at the front. The food smelled mouthwatering, but her stomach felt dull and solid. Nancy was just unlocking her bedroom door when she felt a gaze on her and turned, slowly.

Frank Hardy was just standing, straightening from his seat on the couch. "Hi," he said, lifting his hand for a small wave.

"You have a visitor," Alicia said unnecessarily, deftly sliding the chicken out of the pan and transferring it to a plate. From her glance between the two of them, Alicia thought he was the reason Nancy had been moody, thought he was the reason she had taken this apartment, after a nasty breakup. Alicia had a stack of romance novels in the corner of her bedroom and couldn't care less about the newspaper, and had given absolutely no indication that she was aware of her new roommate's past or reputation.

"Hi," Nancy replied, letting her purse fall from her shoulder to the crook of her elbow, then her hand. Her briefcase was already on the floor. She gave him a small smile. "How are you doing?"

"I'm okay."

Alicia's eyes were alight with interest behind her horn-rimmed glasses. Nancy sighed and unlocked her door, and her roommate reluctantly took her plate to her own bedroom, leaving the living room free.

"So what brings you to Illinois?" Nancy slipped out of her pumps, motioning him to wait as she partially closed her door and scoured her half-unpacked luggage for a pair of jeans.

"Wanted to take you out to celebrate your new job," he said, his voice warm on the other side of the door. "How was your first day?"

Nancy sighed, sweeping her hand through her hair to skim it into a ponytail. "It was all right."

"It'll get better."

"I know." The last thing to come off was the pearls. She pulled her door open and was unsurprised to see him standing on the other side. "Thanks for coming all this way to see me."

"So you think maybe we should call Bess and George, see if they're free?" Frank rubbed his hands together.

"Uh..." Nancy picked up her shoes and walked to the couch, closing her door behind her, and he followed. "Maybe we could do that."

"Are things still..." he paused. "Weird?"

She nodded, once. "Yeah. And... I'm not really all that hungry."

"So let's just get a drink."

She couldn't refuse him, not with that look on his face. "One." She smiled. "And I mean it. They want me to go in for a few hours tomorrow and I'm worthless when I'm hungover."

They went to a tavern equally jammed with professional drinkers and couples dressed for the club. In the corner a group of large red-faced men debated politics, slamming their fists on the table for emphasis, occasionally bursting into loud braying laughter. Waitresses sidled through the crowd with nachos and bowls of soup but far more frequently with rounds of shots and tall amber drinks, not a decorative fruit or toothpick in sight.

"Are you doing any better?"

Nancy shrugged, tracing her fingertip down the side of her glass of scotch and water. "I'm better than I was," she said, and found herself tugging on her cuffs, pulling them down against her wrists. "Tell me what you've been doing lately, though. If you can."

"Well, last week, Joe and I were in Rome..."

Nancy nursed her scotch and sat back against their close, dim booth, smiling when Frank punctuated his story about foiling a kidnap attempt on a minor undersecretary with sharp jabs of his closed fists. The noise of the crowd stayed at a comfortable hum, and when a glass fell on the floor, the answering momentary hush drew their attention at once.

On the other side of the room she saw a figure leaning against the wall, in a leather jacket, his face partially obscured by the thin veil of cigarette and cigar smoke, and her heart lurched painfully. She almost rose from her seat in the booth, but she knew, she knew, she was seeing things. Ned wasn't standing on the other side of the room.

Even so, her nose and throat immediately swelled with the rise of her tears.

"Nan?" Frank said, concerned, and Nancy turned back toward him, keeping her gaze down, on her drink.

"It's okay." Nancy shot him an entirely unconvincing smile, and when she glanced back over, as she'd known she would, the figure was gone.

\--

Bess was up to her elbows in flour. A streak of it ran, the width of a finger, over her forehead and into her hairline. And when she glanced up and saw Nancy, her blue eyes narrowed, her expression guarded. Behind her three sous chefs seemed to chase each other around the kitchen, setting up their stations, flashes of stiff white canvas apron.

During the week Bess had a job, at one of the upscale Chicago boutiques, but on the weekends she was helping her cousin Missy at the latter's new restaurant. Missy herself had jet-black hair tipped in hot pink and wore black boots laced all the way up to her knees, which were usually showing beneath the skirt of some floral cotton dress. Missy pulled her metallic green cardigan a little tighter around her and glanced between the two of them, openly curious.

"I'm sorry."

Bess looked angry, and Nancy already knew that she was. But beyond the anger, she could still see the hurt, the shocked betrayal.

"I'll be right back," Bess told Missy, bringing her apron up to wipe the excess flour off her hands as she headed for the kitchen door.

Outside, the first few cars were pulling into the parking lot. Bess and Nancy stood out of sight, in the fenced-in area outside the kitchen door where the busboys flung the trash. Bess leaned against the wall and bent her knee, pressing her foot flat against the brick. Under Bess's meticulous nails Nancy could see a missed smear of melted chocolate.

"So you got a new job?"

Nancy shrugged. "It doesn't really feel like anything that different," she admitted. "I guess it is."

"That's good." Bess swung her foot down and kicked at a stone, her bangs falling over her eyes. "Guess you'll be sticking around for a while, then."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Right," Bess replied, but when Nancy shot her a quick glance, Bess's face was completely blank. And then the quiet stretched between them, thin and tense.

"Frank came by yesterday," Nancy tried.

Bess had started picking under her fingernails. Nancy could feel the flush starting at her jaw, rising into her cheeks, and she had to bite down a sudden wave of nausea to grip her cuffs and draw them up to her elbows, leaving her forearms bare. Bess glanced over at her, curiosity winning over her sullen refusal to even look at Nancy, and she paled.

"Look at it," Nancy demanded, her voice shaking slightly with anger. "Look at it and get it over with."

Bess swung off the wall and faced Nancy, grabbing her wrists, holding her arms out in front of her. She looked down at Nancy's arms a long moment without speaking, and when Bess glanced up her jaw was tight.

"Why would you do this?" she demanded, her eyes shining. "Why did you run away from us? From me? Why? Explain it to me!"

Nancy wrenched her arms out of Bess's tightening grasp. "Because I couldn't be here anymore," she cried, her own eyes welling up, and she swiped angrily at them. "Because I couldn't be in this town and see all the places I used to be with him and act like everything was fine! It's so fucking hard to even do it now..."

"But you could have come and talked to me about it," Bess said stubbornly. "You could have. We could have helped you get through it."

"No you couldn't," Nancy said, no doubt in her voice. "You couldn't bring him back. You can't bring him back."

"Nan..." Bess sighed. "I know he loved you, but me and George... we loved you too."

Nancy's eyes widened slightly at the past tense. "And you remember him," she said softly. "You two spent more time with us than anyone. You were going to be my maids of honor, for God's sake."

"So what?" Bess hurled back. "So what if we remember him? We miss him too. But he's not coming back, and then you, Nan, you chose this, you chose to do it, when all you had to do was pick up the damn phone and call us. Instead you did this," she said, snatching up Nancy's arms again, and the scars shone faintly in the harsh light overhead.

"I just wanted it to stop hurting."

Bess shook her head. "And has it?"

Nancy raked her hair back from her face, head bowed. "When I was gone, I would hear him, I could hear him saying my name. Every time I woke up I would be thinking about him. I could feel him in my bones. And now... I'm back here and he's everywhere I go. I can see him. And it scares the shit out of me how much I want it to be true, because when I walked out into the ocean that night it was because I could hear him calling me."

"So you didn't mean it," Bess said, the slightest hopeful note in her voice.

Nancy's laugh was harsh. "Oh, I meant it," she said. "I was so tired, tired of fighting it, tired of getting through another day for no reason at all. I feel naked now." She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to force the tears back, keep them from making her voice waver. "When I told him I'd marry him I knew what the rest of my life would be. And now... now he's not here anymore, and I can't go back to who I was."

"And we don't expect you to..."

"But you do." Nancy's voice was bitter. "I can hear Hannah thinking it, I can hear Dad thinking it..." she softened a little, remembering their conversation, how he had felt the same thing before and knew there was nothing he could do to stop her from hurting. "He wasn't even my husband."

"But he was," Bess said softly, and after a moment Nancy nodded.

"There was no one else," she said. "Not like him. And there never will be again. And I couldn't..." Nancy heard the pleading note in her own voice and stopped to clear her throat, and when she started again it was gone. "I needed to be someone else for a while, because I just couldn't deal with the baggage I have here."

Bess's lips thinned for a moment. "So I'm baggage."

"No," Nancy said. "You're not. But the person you remember me being, is."

Bess looked down at her feet for a minute, then smiled and glanced up at Nancy. "You're wrong."

"No I'm not."

"You know how I know?" Bess steamrolled ahead, her grin widening. "Because you said Frank Hardy's name. And that means the Nancy I've known for almost my entire life is still in there somewhere, even if she's buried under a foot of scar tissue."

\--

For the first fifteen minutes the three of them were together, George handled everything very carefully, pointedly not talking about the rift in their relationship, and Nancy realized then that she was surprised by it, and not surprised at all. From Bess she had expected tears and understanding, and from George hurt and backlash, but of the three of them George had always played things closest to the vest, and this was no exception. Then Bess suggested that they go out and get fantastically drunk, and George let Nancy borrow a black long-sleeved top of some thin almost sheer material, and after her first drink the night, for Nancy, was reduced to the strobe flashes in front of her eyes.

She blinked and everything was gold and just a little blurry, Bess's teeth gleaming when she laughed, the bass vibrating straight through her.

She blinked and they were in a taxi heading to another club, and George was having a hushed conversation with her cell phone, plugging her other ear to better hear, ignoring the loud comments Bess was making in her direction, and Nancy's heart swelled with gratitude and relief at being with them again.

She blinked and the blacklights made everyone's skin gleam metallic violet, and she danced until a band took the stage, their voices a low drone that drew thin nails of discomfort over her spine.

She blinked and they were back in Bess and George's apartment. Nancy was on one of the couches, her legs folded over one arm, staring up at the ceiling. She wasn't wearing a watch but it felt like four o'clock in the morning. She shoved her sleeves up against the heat, forgetting, because it had been so very long since she'd been drunk, and George gasped and stared, and the pity in her expression made Nancy's stomach hurt.

She blinked and saw Ned, and when she opened her eyes again the room was dark and she was alone, legs out flat on the couch and a blanket over her, and everything was quiet as it had ever been.

There had been other mornings like this. She had woken up in Ned's bed, and, very aware of her unbrushed teeth, she had kissed him on the cheek, and then he had kissed her neck, and then his knee had slid up between her thighs and she had shivered under him, pulling the fabric of his shirt taut between her fists, and kissing him was very nice but the feel of his breath against her bare skin, that was better.

She blinked and her face was wet and she knew she was going to be sick.

\--

The diamond glittered on her finger. She had been painfully aware of it, the first few days after Ned put it on her, afraid she would lose it somehow, catching the setting when she pulled a sweater over her head or reached for a doorknob. She couldn't even look at it now, for how much it hurt, but she couldn't bring herself to take it off, either. She still worried her thumb against the plain curve of the band. She couldn't imagine giving it up, taking it off to return to his parents, just so they could watch another piece of their son's life come back to them broken. When men glanced over at her and saw it there, they knew she was taken.

When Frank came to see her again a month later, he noticed it too, but he didn't say anything. He didn't have to.

He had been able to cajole her into going to a restaurant, a pizza place. It did a bustling trade, due only to the speed and quality of its chefs. Certainly not from the decor; the close booth had boards for seats, with no padding. Nancy took a sip of her water and watched Frank's eyes.

"I thought I'd be able to visit you a little while longer," he said, his gaze on her left hand, "but I have to take a plane out of O'Hare in the morning. There's an amateur soccer tournament in Italy. There have been terrorist threats."

Nancy propped her chin on her left hand, just so his gaze would be nearer her face, and nodded slightly, just with the barest tilt of her head. "Sounds serious."

"It is," he replied, and sighed as his gaze rose to her lips.

Across the room a dark-haired man stood at the buffet line, one hand holding a plate, the other resting on the head of a small blond boy, clutching his own plate in chubby fingers to his chest, nowhere near tall enough to see the pizza pans. In a smooth movement the man reached down and swept the boy up with one arm, and Nancy studied his profile, heart in her throat, until she was sure it wasn't him.

"Do you want to have kids," he'd asked her, one afternoon, before they were engaged, but after he was sure of what her answer would be. The blackmailer Nancy had been pursuing for the entirety of the case had been holding a gun, during their last encounter, before Ned had managed to make it to them, police hot on his heels. Nancy had been intact, mostly, but for the graze of a bullet on her temple. If she had been a second slower with her duck, she would have died still warm in his arms.

"Yeah," she'd said, hair still wet, the graze freshly bandaged, clad only in a towel and sitting with her legs over the side of the bed. He had slid in behind her, his chest to her back, and she had leaned against him, shaking with delayed reaction, realizing how close she had come to never seeing him again.

And she had laughed a little, with her wet head back against his shoulder and his lips against the side of her neck, and he had held her, arms around her waist, his legs firm against hers.

"I do too."

The little blond boy pitched forward wildly in his father's arms, secure in the knowledge that he'd always be caught, and Nancy came with a shock back to the conversation only to find that it had evaporated in her absence. Frank's gaze on her was mildly speculative, but still warm.

"You know I'm here," he said, raising his eyebrows a little, but the words weren't an accusation, not the hurt lash that Bess's had been. "For whatever you need."

Nancy smiled, not saying anything, cupping her hand against the condensation sliding down the sides of her glass. 

After the meal he walked her to the door of the apartment, and Nancy's momentary amusement at imagining Alicia's interested gaze vanished when she turned and saw the look in Frank's. He was very, very close, watching her intently, and when he leaned in she closed her eyes reflexively. His kiss was sweet and slow, and his hand came up to rest at her face, fingers light against her cheek.

She was the first to pull away, a blush rising to her face. "I," she began, but there were no words, so she smiled, taking in the hope and anticipation in his expression in a glance.

"I can't," she apologized, touching his shoulder. "Not right now. And I can't even say if ever."

Frank's face went almost blank, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, pivoting so that his back was to the railing.

"I'm sorry. I know it's hard to understand..."

"You know," Frank said softly, "Joe loves Vanessa."

"And a lot of other girls," Nancy said archly. Frank's acknowledging smile was perfunctory.

"He loves her, but if he sees a hint, a sign, a face in the crowd that makes him even think of Iola..."

Nancy swallowed and glanced away, her heart pounding as she remembered a thousand times that had happened since.

"...he has to follow it. And there's not a damn thing he can do about it." Frank shook his head, swinging his foot out to kick at an invisible stone. "And I always felt bad for Vanessa, but..."

Silence fell between them, and he kept his head down. Nancy took a deep breath, then reached for his hand, squeezing it as she pressed a kiss against his cheek.

"You deserve more than this," she told him. "More than me."

"Ahh," Frank said, shaking his head, "there, my dear Miss Drew, I think you're wrong."

\--

It was raining, that morning, hard and cool. Nancy shivered in her lined rainjacket as she stepped through the doors at the Morning Record, waving a greeting at the security guard and receptionist that sent drops of moisture flying. At her desk, her keyboard was covered by assorted telephone messages; Nancy hated voicemail. She flipped absently through them as she logged in and waited for her new email to load. When she didn't find the name she was looking for, she made a noncommittal noise and arrowed through the electronic messages.

The night before she had dreamed that Ned proposed to her, during a baseball game. "Will you marry me," the signboard had flashed, and she had looked at him, and literally then the entire field had been empty, all the seats bare, save for them. "Yes," she had said, and then she had seen Frank, standing at first base, gazing up at them, his face expressionless.

And then she had woke feeling unsettled and heartsick. Ned had proposed to her at Chez Louis, and she had known the entire time, practically from the moment he had called to ask her on that date, that things would end that way, because he hadn't been able to hide it from her, had barely tried. From the moment she had seen the box of long-stemmed red roses in his hand, she had been sure, and when she took them, it was like telling him yes. Even so, the sight of him on bended knee while the violins played softly around them had still brought tears to her eyes.

And now Frank...

Her computer chimed as another email arrived, and Nancy clicked it, her throat thick with tears that sank as she scanned the message. At an address on the other side of downtown, she took note, her eyes sparkling. There were other messages from Bess and George; Nancy locked her computer, snatched the sheet off her notepad, and started for the door at a good clip. With any luck she'd be able to check those messages right after she'd finished her story, and still have the afternoon free to check some sources for another.

When she slid into the driver's seat of her car, the scent hit her, mingled rain and cologne, and she sat very still for a moment, and this was worse than seeing the shadow of him in a crowd, worse than waking with the memory of his kiss on her lips. It hit her with palpable force, the sense-memory of him with her, in this car, his palms cupping her face as they kissed, urging her closer, the look of adoration and love on his face when they parted.

The healed scars on the tender flesh of her forearms burned for a second and she set her jaw, twisting the key in the ignition. Joe could always hold onto the slight, barest hope because Iola just might have made it out of the car before the explosion. But Ned had breathed his last in her arms. There was supposed to be closure. She wasn't supposed to see the face of a dead man in every crowd.

But her bones sang with the ache of still wanting him. A thousand miles hadn't been able to mute it, and even while she had managed to stumble through a daily existence, she had known she was half a person, even if no one around her had, because she hadn't given them enough time to see.

And for twenty-three of every twenty-four hours, she could pretend it was all right, she could track down stories or spend time drinking or talking with Bess and George, could cook her meals and entertain herself with the thought of Frank, but for that last hour, she was still so hollow she could feel the wind blow through her, and when it spoke, it was with his voice.

She was momentarily thankful for the excuse of the rain as she swiped at her eyes and put the car in gear. She could do this later, give herself over to the wave she could feel approaching, in the wee small hours, in her cold bed, but for now, she had to let it go.

\--

"So what happened?"

"We were at the light," the man said, still shaking despite the styrofoam cup of hot coffee in his hand, the rain driving hard and cold against the windows. His teeth were chattering. "That was it. The light changed and I had enough time to take my foot off the brake, and all I could see was this truck, coming through, went right in front of me, brakes squealing, and... and it was the worst thing I've ever seen, and the sound of it..."

The intersection was a mass of lights, the ambulance standing almost askew, but the faces of all the spectators were set. The blue lights glinted on the broken glass.

"Was it quick?"

They had her, on a gurney, finally. The man now standing with the blank look on his face at the window of the cafe had been first, and he had brushed the remains of the driver's side window away, reaching in to take a pulse, recoiling at the blood.

"Yeah. It was quick."

The statements all agreed; the patrolman flipped his notebook shut, raising his head to see the twisted hulk of the car through the ambulance's rear window. Everyone else had made it out with relatively minor injuries.

"We found her purse."

The cop sifted through the contents, lifting out the wallet. The driver's license photo was washed-out and faded, but the grin was wide, the eyes sparkling. "Carson Drew's daughter," he realized aloud, with a groan. "God, I'm going to hate that call."

He looked back at her, the broken body no longer bleeding, gone cold under the drive of the rain. There was no question that it was an accident; the truck driver was just as vehement was he was apologetic, and the red light camera verified it. But for one thing, the policeman thought, looking at that still face. She had turned to see the truck, and she had known, in that second, what was going to happen. But her face wasn't frozen in a scream, in pain or agony.

She was smiling.


End file.
